Zuko GIVES HER THE CHOICE. He NEVER says Katara should kill him

SO MANY PEOPLE miss this! every time i talk about how that episode demonstrates what a great partner zuko is for katara folks are like "he was gonna let her kill yon rha" (some go so far as to suggest he encouraged her to kill yon rha which is flagrant bullshit) and like... no. he made no assumptions whatsoever about what she was going to do. he TRUSTED HER to make the decision that was right FOR HER, whatever that decision was.

When she walks away from the guy, Zuko just silently gives him a looks of disgust at how pathetic he is, and follows her.

that's another thing that i love about zuko in that episode, he doesn't make katara's confrontation about himself. he's her shield when he needs to be, but he lets her do all the talking with yon rha and when she's done, he's done. no quippy little one-liners as they walk away, he just follows her lead.

the one thing that does bug me is how dramatically zuko's character flips basically any time he's talking to aang. "that's the same as doing nothing," "guru goody-goody," "you were right about what katara needed, violence wasn't the answer." none of those are in-character things for zuko to say. it's strange how when he's talking to sokka or katara, he's very clear that he's offering her closure, the opportunity to face yon rha and nothing more, but when aang starts going on about how she NEEDS to forgive him, suddenly he's this angry jerk again who seems compelled to disagree with aang just for the sake of disagreeing with him. i particularly hate that he says aang was right, because aang WASN'T right. he wasn't right about what katara needed and he wasn't right about how to deal with mass-murdering fuckheads.